Just one out of every 10 governments in the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee is happy for people to register its country name in new gTLDs.

That’s according to a new GAC database detailing which countries want to keep tabs on how their names are being used.

Out of 80 GAC members contributing to the database, just eight have said registries can sell their country names with no restrictions.

The eight countries and territories are the UK, the USA, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, Guernsey and Pitcairn.

New gTLD registries will therefore be able to auction off, for example, finland.guru or pitcairn.news, to whoever wants them.

Another 10 governments — Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Montenegro, New Zealand, Romania, Spain and Switzerland — have relinquished oversight in the case of dot-brand registries that have signed Specification 13 of the ICANN Registry Agreement.

So if Sony wants to register brazil.sony to itself, it can without restrictions.

Under the new gTLD Registry Agreement, all country and territory names in the six official UN languages have to be reserved by all registries unless they can reach agreement with the applicable government.

The 18 governments mentioned above have basically waived this right to be notified in whole or in part.

The remaining 62 governments say they still wish to be notified when a registry wants to release its name.

GAC chair Thomas Schneider told ICANN (pdf) that countries not yet listed in the database should be treated as if they’re still restricted, so the actual number is closer to 200.

In short, this database is not a lot of help to dot-brands and other registries that want to start using or selling country names.

Critics have pointed out that many governments wanting to regulate their names in new gTLDs have not done so in their own ccTLDs.

Of the 62, ownership of country names is mixed. Italy owns italy.it and italia.it, for example, while germany.de and deutschland.de appear to be in private hands.